It’s not that I like rejection. I vacillate between responding well to it or ignoring it or putting it in the appropriate context and then sometimes taking it personally and deciding it’s a sign I’m the biggest loser. Or not even the biggest loser, just a pitiful loser, too pitiful to be the biggest loser.
But I keep putting myself and my writing out there, and that involves A LOT of rejection.
This Sunday, I’m presenting the amalgamation/transformation of rejection from a couple of places–a poetry book competition and a playwriting competition. Both were encouraging, but the answer was no.
I have this idea I’ve been working on since 2021. I write plays and poetry and want my plays to get produced and my poetry to get published. Somehow, in the month before I was set to have a hysterectomy (which coincided with a book competition deadline), I decided I should combine narrative poems written in the voices of particular characters into a play.
Wouldn’t that be cool? I thought and still think, to have a play that works well onstage and a book you could just open up and read the poems in order or randomly or whatever.
I got the manuscript done in time for the deadline, had the surgery, started attending a food behavior class from UW Eating Disorders Clinic, and went back to work, etc. etc. etc.
Since then, I’ve started and finished a lot of other projects (started way more than I’ve finished, if I’m honest). But the play-made-of-poems stayed in my head. It’s called Impelled. Here’s the news release I wrote & the poster I’ve been sharing on social media & putting up various places:
NEWS RELEASE:
There’s a lot of drama—and poetry—in an ordinary day.
Impelled, a new play by Marnie Bullock Dresser, premieres onstage in Spring Green on Sunday, April 27 at the Gard Theater from 2-4, with a staged reading and a talkback. Terry Kerr is the director for the one-act play set on the campus of a formerly-Baptist college. An administrator tries to help a student and a professor is sort of helpful, but under the surface of the everyday, these three characters express a huge range of thoughts and feelings and questions.
The actors for the staged reading are Melinda Van Slyke, Douglas Swenson, and Hannah Jo Anderson, all familiar to audiences in the River Valley and Madison theater scenes.
Marnie has published poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and journalism, and taught English at UW-Richland for more than 30 years.
Impelled is made up entirely of poems. But also jokes, sex, food, and God. By the end of the day, our characters are not just indulging in really good barbecue from a food truck on campus; it’s almost as if they have gathered together for communion.
A grant from River Valley Arts provided the opportunity for table reads, revision, editorial feedback, and the staged reading itself.
Note: due to adult themes and spicy language, the play is not recommended for those under 17.
I’ve been sucking it up and ignoring the awkwardness I always feel when I’m self-promoting. Yesterday I recorded a segment which I think will appear tomorrow morning on WRCO’s “Morning Show,” which you can listen to live or later.
All this is made possible by two things:
retirement means I can spend time not just on writing, but also on follow-through (the thing I struggle with the most, and the thing I found most impossible when I was working full-time).
I got an Artistic Development grant from River Valley Arts, a wonderful organization you should consider supporting.
It’s like growing carrots: on the surface it’s an ordinary day but below you may have giant carrots.
I’m hoping Sunday’s staged reading will lead to more good stuff for Impelled, but even if that’s somehow the end of the line, it’s been an amazing ride to get to work with the poet Rita Mae Reese on editorial feedback, and with Terry Kerr as my director, and three fabulous actors: Melinda Van Slyke, Douglas Swenson, and Hannah Jo Anderson. I asked my cast in an email if they had a word or a sentence they thought of when they thought of Impelled. Hannah said “rhapsody,” which honestly makes me feel rhapsodic, and Doug said “It’s like growing carrots: on the surface it’s an ordinary day but below you may have giant carrots.” And he included a picture, which I think is a good way to end this particular post:
I remember when Thriller came out in 1983. I remember going to TJ McFly’s in Carbondale because it was easy to get into without an i.d. I remember the dance floor. I remember where the big TV was. I remember the guy I had a crush on who I met there. I think his name was Rod. I think all of that is true. What I also remember is that my friends and I learned the dance steps for Thriller and that’s how we danced when the song came on.
But now, having started to learn the actual choreography, I think we knew maybe one or two steps. And we probably looked great—I mean, we weren’t 20 yet. We were shaking our booties. We looked fine. But we didn’t look like the Thriller dancers except in my head.
And why am I learning the choreography? Specifically, it was to prepare for today, for an event called Thrill the World. Locally, we did Thrill the World River Valley, and it was a fundraiser for the Spring Green Community Library and River Valley ARTS (full disclosure—I am a board member of RV ARTS).
I do like to dance, and I like to have a few little dance breaks during the day as part of my pomodoro process. But I haven’t GONE OUT DANCING for a long time. I did all through college, and then graduate school.
My favorite two people to dance with EVER were my friends Dennis and Maria. Dennis was like a grandfather clock with multiple sets of arms and legs coming unsprung approximately in time to the music. I loved dancing with him (at a little remove, for safety’s sake) because it was a joyous thing, watching him dance. Then my friend Maria, a lot of times, her dance was kind of just rhythmic surfing. I was just sure between the two of them out there that absolutely no one would be looking at me and my little girlie moves. You know—“dance like no one is watching.” No one was watching. They were watching Dennis and Maria.
But of course, we should dance like people are watching and we just don’t give a fuck.
Which is what I did today. One of the reasons I signed up to be a fundraiser was because—well, it was a fundraiser. And good organizations were set to receive the funds. And I’m a board member of one of those organizations. Etc.
The other reason I signed up to be a fundraiser was to go public with my intention to dance in public and follow through with it. I was worried I’d chicken out (and that’s even before I started watching the tutorials and learned how freaking hard the freaky steps are).
Why would I chicken out? Well. My health is not fantastic. I’m ridiculously out of shape. I have asthma. And I’m in physical therapy for back pain. My spine has an official diagnosis to go with its damages and deformities, but I just like to think of it as having a rickety spiral staircase where all the helpful bones and cartilage should be. Movement wears me out and there’s a particular pain in my lower back I’m very familiar with and sometimes my hamstrings just SEIZE UP. But my awesome PT guy prescribed more activity, and this seemed like awesome activity.
So I did it. I watched the tutorial videos and went to an in-person practice. It wasn’t a stunning success leading up to today. I can free-form dance for 3-5-7 minutes without falling over, and I’ve been diligently working my way up to doing multiple minutes of the official Thriller dance steps, but an hour of mostly standing and repeating dance steps—that I couldn’t do. So I did a lot of from a chair. Which, you know. Not my vision of myself.
But damn it, I did it. Did I get all the steps down and do the whole thing? No I did not. Did I begin the whole thing by writhing on the street? Also no.
But here’s what I did do. I sat in a chair near the dance spot, and by the time the street writhers were standing, I was in line with them. I did the steps I’d learned: I zombie marched. I shoulder stepped. I booty bounced. I swam. And then I (kind of did what I was supposed to) and finally right-hipped and left-hipped and roared my way away from the dancers and into the crowd of people watching.
My son got off from his retail job in time to step outside and watch. He assured me I didn’t embarrass him, and that I wasn’t the zombie LEAST ACQUAINTED with the actual steps.
But even if I’d embarrassed my son, even I had been the zombie least acquainted, I’d still have done it.
And I’m really proud of myself. Grateful to the people who donated to my little personal fundraising page. Grateful to Stef and Phil, the zombie bride and groom. It was their actual wedding day today, and they did this as part of their reception. Too cool.
I’m reminded of Teddy Roosevelt, the “man in the arena” quote. Not that anyone has criticized me to my face, or would, but this part (even with the old-fashioned gendered pronouns) really resonates:
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
It wasn’t blood and dust on my face; it was makeup and baby powder to make me look pale. If we do it again next year (and I’m hearing we will), I hope to see more of those folks who were on the sidelines getting out there and booty bouncing along.
(If you want to donate to my little fundraiser page, you still can—I put the deadline down as Halloween. And remember—it’s my little spot, but the funds raised are going to the Spring Green Community Library and River Valley ARTS.)
Zombie eyes. (And my ridiculous hair, which kept just trying to look cute.)
Is your uterus quarantined in my office?
Is it velvet? Latex? Mod-podge? Wires? Ribbons? Lace?
If so, I apologize. You’ll get it back. I promise.
Were you in the original exhibit? Are you one of us?
Are your creations fearfully and wonderfully made?
Is your uterus quarantined in my office?
Do you spend more or less time now taking offense?
Has your life been irrevocably derailed?
If so, I apologize. You’ll get it back. I promise.
Let us now praise our famous menopauses.
The big one. The peri, which stops and starts, like waves.
Is your uterus quarantined in my office?
Has yours been removed? Do you miss it? The mysterious
bloody Weltanschauung a uterus contains?
If so, I apologize. You’ll get it back. I promise.
Are you sewing like a banshee gone all Amish?
Has your normally sufficient equilibrium been mislaid?
Is your uterus quarantined in my office?
If so, I apologize. You’ll get everything back. I promise.
This is Alison Gates’s contribution to the Exquisite Uterus project.
_____
This poem was inspired by a Facebook comment from Alison Gates in which she said, in response to someone asking if she was referring to the Exquisite Uterus Project, “Yes! Are you one of us? Is your uterus quarantined in my office? If so, I apologize.” This may well be my first found poem. (The woman Alison was responding to quoted “fearfully and wonderfully made” from Psalm 139 in her contribution, so I was inspired by her, too.)
Alison Gates & Helen Klebesadel (two of my feminist / academic / Wisconsin / inspirations) started the Exquisite Uterus Project in 2012 as protest against the (unfortunately) continuing (and unfortunately escalating) war on women. I was lucky enough to see the exhibit at the University of Wisconsin System’s Faculty College, which used to be hosted on my sweet little UW campus.
My villanelle here isn’t particularly political except in the sense that I truly believe the personal is political, that it’s political to speak plainly of our lady parts, and I aimed the question about taking offense at people who are offended by the word “uterus” or any hint of women’s agency, humor, intelligence, vast creative power, etc.
My own relationship with my uterus is very much defined by perimenopause these days. My brilliant body chose this pandemic as a moment in which to say “yeah–no–we’re not done with all that yet.” So that explains the direction the poem went.
In any case, I believe reproductive rights are human rights. That women’s rights are human rights. In case anyone ever had any doubt. And I’m concerned that people are using the pandemic as an excuse to curtail abortion rights, such as this story from NPR, which describes such attempts (and at least momentary judicial remedies).
In the meantime, I am happy to celebrate amazing, creative women who share their work and their passion and their generosity.
Apple, apple, mother-fucking apple.
I tried counting, the way counting
can be meditative. I got to five.
Listing colors worked a little better:
yellow, red, green, brown, black,
beige, rust, orange, peach, pink,
dark red, dark brown, white, off-white.
I modified some poses to enable
picking rotten apples simultaneous to
breathing, just breathing, well, mostly breathing.
Cat pose, cow pose, quad stretch—those worked best.
I talked to my right wrist as it began to hurt
and then my left when I shifted.
My knees both hurt but not at once.
“Hello tightness, my old friend”
I’ve begun saying to my lower back and hips,
but not tonight when I was gleaning
from below the apple tree I loved
when we bought the house but which now I hate.
Somehow my familiar pains were simply not
there tonight. It’s standing and sitting that hurt me
most, not crawling on my hands and knees,
putting all those apples into one broad, galvanized bucket,
one five-gallon cat litter bucket, and then aiming
so many more apples onto an old bed sheet.
I started saying apple, apple, apple, in my head,
apple, apple, apple, two apples, three apples,
another apple, apple, apple, apple.
This task I loathe is loathsome largely
on account of the symbolic baggage that grows
prolific with the apples:
I waste resources.
I am a woman from whom things get away.
I don’t keep up. My ambitions don’t match my energy.
I am lazy. The person I thought I was 20 years ago
when we bought the house is not the person I am.
I have a million mason jars I don’t fill
with anything
but dust.
The mother-fucking tree isn’t even on our property.
Why am I the only one who worries about attracting
yellow-jackets? Why haven’t I hired someone to prune it?
Why haven’t I sabotaged it so that, dead,
it would have to be cut down? Why won’t my husband
prune it back the way the orchard pictures show?
Why won’t he cut it down?
Why don’t I remember to put out the organic fly traps
in time? Why don’t I make applesauce every year?
Why don’t I pick up the few apples that drop
every day and add them to my compost pile?
Why don’t I have a compost pile at all?
I am an awful person. I must be.
I thought all those thoughts. I tried not to.
But I thought them anyway.
And when I thought those thoughts, I also thought,
my t-shirt’s riding up. I’m not going to pull it down.
What if someone sees the white expanse of belly
and hip laid bare right at this very moment?
And then I thought so what if someone sees?
None of what they see should be a surprise.
Each time I thought those thoughts I also thought
apple, apple, apple. Red. Blood. Brown. Apple.
Rabbit carcass. Or possibly excrement.
Apple, apple, apple, apple, apple, apple.
Then I was breathing deep in my big belly,
the belly this shirt’s too small for,
breathing in and also out, a little longer out,
and in again, the rotten smell, the cider smell,
the smell of apple after apple, apple, apple.
______
_____
I’ve written about this tree before, a poem called “On Conscientiousness,” which I see myself lacking.
But there really were moments tonight when all that was in my head was “apple” and my body was just a body that existed to move rotten apples from one place to another.
I’m not going to say nirvana, but it was not loathsome or even particularly unpleasant. Interesting.
We’ve had this exact same conversation before.
He stops me at the end of a lap, interrupts
my rhythm, smiles, explains what the black lines are for
on the bottom of the pool. “That’s the guide for laps,”
he says. The first time he told me this
I started to explain my side of things
but he repeated himself, once again pointing
at the bottom of the pool. I demurred to his preference.
But not today. Today I said, “Yes,
I know that, but when they have the lanes set up
so wide like this, there’s room for three across
and I prefer the middle so I don’t drift and bump
and scrape my hands on the lane markers.” I smiled.
He smiled. And said again what the black lines are for
and that since there were only two of us, I could
move over. “Yes, I could,” I said, “but we are
cooperating fine so far. We haven’t bumped yet.”
He literally harrumphed, “Pretty close,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “I only have a lap
or two to go.” And pushed off with a splash.
Never mind that usually there are three
in those wide lanes. And never mind the lane
to our left had one swimmer on one side. So he
could have gone away and left me alone.
We were following different sets of unwritten rules.
He couldn’t know that one of mine is don’t
even think of messing with my time in the pool.
Don’t throw me off. Don’t slow me down. Just don’t.
_____
My happy place. For the noon swim time, they divide this into three wide lanes instead of six single lanes.
______
And then I began another poem about swimming–will work on this more at some point….
In the pool I’m graceful, strong, and sleek, and fast,
at least compared to how I am on land.
I’m pushing all my thoughts out of my head.
In the pool, I’m more a body than a mind.
______
It occurs to me what my husband always says when I talk about manspreading, that I’m as guilty of it as anyone. He’s pretty right–that I am pretty confident about claiming my space.
Also, this guy was being relatively polite in his tone, but it occurs to me he didn’t actually say anything like, “Would you mind moving over?” He really didn’t say he wanted me to move over until I said, “Yes, I know that’s what the lines are for. I like being in the middle.”
Do you suppose he’s written a blog about me????????
I was at a fun concert the other night & one of the musicians was hawking t-shirts and said, “they’ll make you look 15 years younger and 15 pounds thinner.” I thought and then said outloud, “But I don’t care about either of those things.” In that moment it was 100% true.
What an interesting journey I’m on. The Health at Every Size book has certainly helped.
Having spent a fair bit of my life trying to fit
in spaces not designed for me, I’m now,
at 52,proclaiming fuck that shit—
I’ll squeeze in if I want or I will go
all rogue and say no thank you when the nurse
says “can we get your weight?” I swear I felt
like fucking Che Guevara. Own my mess
is one of my mottos. What I haven’t dealt
with yet I’ll either tackle or accept.
And if my tackling’s super slow, that’s also fine.
I now proclaim my life a modest success
chock-full of laughs. I’d rather be funny than right.
Ars longa, vita brevis, tempis fugit.
It’s time to write it all down before I forget.
_____
Happy Birthday to me!
We’ll see how well I hold to this resolution, but I am trying to accept my slow tackling. Acceptance–that’s the word from now until the end of the year. I picked a word for the year in January, momentum. Still a good word. Still aiming for that. But acceptance now, too.
Part of the fun of birthdays in this social-media-age is the flood of messages on Facebook. I’m trying (not always possible, thanks Facebook) to say thanks to all of them, and take a moment as I do to really be thankful for that person’s presence in my life. Some of them are very much from my past, so I try to think about that time for a moment.
This poem has Latin, which I won’t apologize for–people who don’t know it can Google, right?
And profanity–also won’t apologize for that, either.
It’s kind of a listing of mottos–the Latin ones, own my mess, my life a modest success, I’d rather be funny that right. It’s a middle-age indulgence, I think, the choosing and listing of mottos.
I thought of “I’d rather be funny than right” while I was driving and almost had to pull over because it made me laugh pretty hard. It’s just true.
My Mom often finds pink and yellow birthday paper for me because although neither one is my favorite color, the two of them together are my favorite color combination.
Before the play I watched her sit, posed, on a rock,
one knee bent up, near her chin. She was covered just so
modestly with what can only be called a frock,
one bright red shoe dangling from a pedicured toe.
Let me say more about her fabulous dress
which I got to observe going down the hill after
the play. Sheer and sleeveless, white, a mess
of summer flowers painted on the skirt.
Everything looked expensive and just exactly right.
I haven’t mentioned yet how old she was.
Seventy-something I’m guessing, which is why
it wasn’t a surprise to see her favoring her knees
as we made our way to the parking lot and why
I can’t get the way I saw her first out of my mind.
______
These are my red shoes. Not hers. Still.
______
I saw her before and after seeing The Unexpected Manat the Touchstone @ American Players Theatre (which is wonderful and which you should go see and which I will write about more if I can think of anything to say other than “perfect”) so of course I couldn’t possibly say anything to this woman about any of this.
Fallout will make the sunsets stunning
someone told me and I believe it,
just like pollution from St. Louis once
turned the sky above the American Bottoms pink
to contrast nicely with the deep dark green
of the Cahokia Mounds.
Those mound-dwellers had it all
but they don’t have what we have,
so much potential as wasted as
the best chocolate-chip cookie in the world
chewed four times and spit out
by someone with different body issues
than I have, having never wasted a cookie,
never not once in my whole life,
unless you count as waste that whole
eating more calories than you burn thing,
in which case I waste food all the time,
but I don’t count that way and I wish you wouldn’t.
If only self-loathing could contour
my shape! If only rumination paid off
in dollars and not cortisol!
If only the strange map of cracking
in the front left panel of my Ford
could show me the way to solvency.
Are all the mustards invasive?
The splash of yellow I see in fields now,
and Dame’s Rockets everywhere—
it’s hard to hate them
with their bright mauvey pink bouncing
in the breeze that is somehow not
strong enough to discourage mosquitoes.
Reconciliation comes before repair,
at least I think it does, and so I try
to love what’s here and who I am
and the massive disasters around me
and trust I will know what to fix when
it’s time to fix and until such time
as fixing is all I care about, I will just let
the fact that I am a large woman make me feel the same way
a bad song from the 80s can make me
happy, just happy, just really happy.
Something remarkable happened today—
I looked in the mirror and I liked how I looked.
(I was wearing a swimming suit, by the way.)
There’s something you should know—how very much I weigh,
and the fact that my back is fused and strange and crooked.
Something remarkable happened today
in the locker room mirror. I thought, “Hey–
nice hip.” (The right one sticks out and I had it stuck.)
I was wearing my bright blue one-piece, by the way,
the one that inspired a very fit man last month to say
“New suit, looks good.” I mostly just said thanks,
which means another remarkable thing happened that day.
I didn’t make excuses. I didn’t say
I’m sorry I’m not leaner. I didn’t choke
for wearing a swimming suit. By the way,
I thought my entire body looked okay.
For me to think that—it’s like lightning struck.
Something remarkable happened today.
I was wearing a swimming suit, by the way.
marniere 